


The Small Print

by crazylittleelf



Series: Absolution [2]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-27
Updated: 2010-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazylittleelf/pseuds/crazylittleelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia settles into her new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Small Print

_i'll sell your memories for 15 pounds per year  
but you can keep the bad days  
it'll make you insane  
and i'm bending the truth  
you're to blame  
for all the life that you'll lose_

Olivia raised the cup of coffee to her face and inhaled the fragrant steam.

Real coffee. Not coffee-flavored water or imitation coffee. Real coffee that you could go to any grocery store and buy off the shelf like it was common.

She sipped at it, letting the bitter liquid roll over her tongue. She could barely remember the last time she tasted real coffee. When she went home, she was smuggling coffee beans back with her. And honey, and bananas, and chocolate.

The thought brought her up short, and she looked around the apartment again, uneasiness settling between her shoulder blades. It was like being undercover she kept reminding herself. Deep cover, and she'd been trained for that. But it wasn't the same and she hadn't been trained for this.

The similarities of this stranger's home were jarring. She wasn't really a stranger, now was she? It wouldn't be so easy to slip into a stranger's life unnoticed.

It was a good thing, too, since her datapad was virtually useless here, with no network to connect back to for a constant stream of information. She did have a basic dossier on her target, facts that had been collected about this woman she was pretending to be.

About herself, something whispered.

She read her double's bleak biography and wondered why things went so wrong for her. She caught herself feeling sorry for her, and resolutely pushed those thoughts away. Similarities or not, this woman was her enemy. This entire world was her enemy.

She swirled the coffee in her mug and looked at her hazy reflection. It was hard to remember. There was certainly nothing here to indicate they were at war. There were no curfews, no city-wide surveillance. There were no quarantines. This Fringe division was a barely-formed thing, consisting of a crazy old man and his son who stared at her with puppy-dog eyes. And her, the wolf among sheep.

She finished the last of her coffee and pulled on the black suit jacket over her borrowed gray shirt, and headed out to face her borrowed life.

 


End file.
